CHAPTER IV
Jane felt pleasure course through her - instantaneous pleasure. She went towards him with the pleasure showing on her face, and in particular in her extraordinarily clear eyes.
“Oh,” she said, “I hoped you’d come!”
He smiled down at her, but it was a much more quizzical smile than she had seen on his face up till now.
“You flatter me. Mademoiselle Arden. I wondered how you were managing to pass your time.”
“Sandra isn’t coming for several days,” she told him. “She finds Paris too fascinating.”
“Who doesn’t? Or perhaps you don’t?” His dark eyes twinkled peculiarly. “Somehow I can’t imagine you fitting in awfully well in the Paris scheme. In that dress you look like a creature of the woods - a dryad. Aphrodite rising out of the sea! Anything but a secretary to a film star.”
“Such a glamorous film-star that I become as tasteless as a cabbage by comparison with a whole bundle of asparagus when she is within a mile of me,” she admitted with unforced cheerfulness. “Wait until you see her! ... Or you have seen her, haven’t you? I mean, not only on the screen.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve seen her.”
“Then you know what I mean.” Suddenly she touched his arm. “Isn’t that a nightingale singing in that copse over there? Oh no, it can’t be - not in September!”
“My knowledge of bird-life is strictly limited,” Monsieur Etienne admitted. “But nevertheless, we can go and find out.” And she found herself being helped over a low wall and into the spacious parkland, that was really only a continuation of the forest. “How do these great trees affect you?” he asked, looking up into the spreading branches. “Do you feel yourself being dwarfed by them? Enclosed by them? Cut off by them?”
“No, I love trees. And I love this place.”
“Eh bien!” he exclaimed softly. ‘That is as it should be. A girl who looks like you.”
Suddenly she felt acutely shy. It was the second time he had made deliberate mention of her appearance in a very few minutes. She sat herself down on the low wall and clasped her hands.
“Tell me. Monsieur Etienne,” she asked, “where do you live in all this wilderness of trees? And did you get there safely last night? You didn’t by any chance fall into a rabbit-hole?”
He shook his head. “No, I arrived without a scratch. And I live, as I said, about a half kilo or so from here.” He sat himself down beside her. “And you must call me Etienne.”
“Then you’ll have to call me Jane.”
“That is very nice. I shall like to call you Jane.” He produced his cigarette-case and offered it to her. “Tell me, Jane, how did you sleep last night beneath the roof of La Cause Perdue? Did you find your bed comfortable?”
“Superbly comfortable.”
“And the house? How do you like the house?”
“It is almost exactly as I expected to find it. A rich man’s retreat that is marred a little by being so obviously a retreat that was never intended for himself alone, or for spiritual refreshment, shall we say, after the drain of city life and the constant society of people who share the same interests as himself. There is no indication that I have come upon that he ever feels the need to get away from everyone and everything and try something new. The place is just a magnificent stage-set, planned for entertainment on a generous scale.”
“And it is a bad thing to wish to entertain?”
“No; not if you love people - lots and lots of people all the time! But artists are usually temperamental, and they do crave to get away. Even Sandra does that sometimes, and she is the most rational of all the film-people I’ve met up to date.”
“But then you haven’t met Rene Delaroche yet, have you?”
“No,” She looked at him sideways. “But you have. Don’t tell me he is an artist without temperament? - and a Latin, at that!”
“Are we Latin types more explosive than Anglo-Saxon types?”
She smiled. “Anglo-Saxons are supposed to be very stolid.”
“Not red-headed Anglo-Saxons!”
She looked away, down a green glade of the forest, and wondered what it would look like in the autumn, and in winter, when perhaps light falls of snow rested gently there.
“All this is so beautiful,” she said, as if the words were forced out of her.
“And for you it could be a retreat?”
“I can’t imagine myself growing quickly tired of it.”
He regarded her through a faint haze of cigarette smoke “Tell me,” he said, in that rather quaint way he had of making a request suddenly, and in his faintly accented English that disturbed curious echoes in her mind - set her mentally groping after some explanation of whatever it was about his speech that was not exactly familiar, but was not altogether new - “were you seeking for indications of the type of man your host is when you were alone in the house today? You say ‘there are no indications that you have come upon that he ever feels the need to try something new.’ Well, perhaps he does; but I am curious to know why you should wish to find out?”
She felt faint colour burning her cheeks. Had she made it sound as if she had been prying? Taking advantage of her lonely occupation of the house to poke an inquisitive nose into the concerns of a man who wasn’t there to prevent her?
“I’ll tell you the truth,” she said. “I did explore all over the house, but it was only out of idle curiosity. I also played some gramophone records this morning. Do you think Monsieur Delaroche would mind?”
“I can’t think of one single reason why he should,” Etienne replied. “What records did you play?”
“His own, of course.”
“Then you are by way of being a fan of his?”
“Yes.” She nodded her head emphatically, and looked down the green glade, “Yes; I am!”
“Then you must ask him to give you an autographed set of his recordings.”
“He might give those to Sandra, but not to me.”
“You can but ask.”
He seemed to be concentrating his attention on the rich material of her gown, and suddenly he touched it lightly. “Why did you dress up like this - so enchantingly - when you are alone?”
Jane didn’t dare to look at him, but she could feel her face burning afresh. If she said, “Because I hoped you might remember where you had left me and come and see if I was all right!” what would he say?
“Perhaps you are like your English compatriot who liked to feel certain he was always correctly attired, even although buried in the heart of the jungle,” Etienne suggested. “The one whom Kipling made famous as the best type of Englishman abroad.”
Suddenly she had to turn and look at him, because there was something in his voice that actually and literally disturbed her. Some vibration, or some quality, that perplexed her. She asked, with bent brows: “Do you sing yourself?”
He smiled down into her eyes. ‘Tell me why you dressed up, Jane?”
Her eyes swerved to avoid his. She said the first thing that came into her mind. “It never occurred to me, somehow, that Rene Delaroche was married! ... Somehow it’s not easy to imagine a popular entertainer with a wife and family. But since he has a daughter there must once have been a wife.”
“That is logical,” he agreed.
“But there is at present no wife?”
“No; there was once a wife.”
She wondered why, although his cigarette was only half-burnt out, he suddenly flung it to the ground and stamped on it hard. He stood up, and she received the impression of an intolerant movement made by a suddenly intolerably restless horse, and he looked up once more into the branches of the trees and said, as if he was speaking from behind locked teeth: “Do you mind if we do not discuss either Delaroche, his wife, or his daughter?” He went on staring at a little patch of blue sky amid the leaves. “Not when there are other things to discuss. Far more interesting things.”
“Such as?” she queried feebly.
“You, amongst quite a numbe
r of things.” He sat down and looked at her once more but his face was the remote, hard face of the man she had first met. “How soon you’ll grow tired of sharing a film-star’s thunder, and how much longer it will be before you break away? What your ambitions are, and what you intend to do with your life? How many times you’ve fallen in love, and out of love...?”
“Is love a game?” she asked.
“It is sort of a game. A simple game, because it requires only two players, and played skillfully it becomes a beautiful diversion.” She felt as if something plucked at the very base of her heart strings, and caused a discord by setting them jangling. “Why don’t you invite me into the house and offer me a drink, and we can discuss the ethics of this game, and shoes, and ships and sealing-wax, if you wish.”
She said uncertainly: “I can’t be absolutely certain Monsieur Delaroche wouldn’t object.”
“Why should he object? I am a friend of his!... Even Jeanne Bethune counts me respectable, or very nearly respectable! She would offer me a bed tonight if I asked for it.”
“With me in the house?”
“Why not? She is a wonderful chaperon - she has had a good deal of experience! Come along, let’s go!”
Once in the house he seemed to cast from him altogether his temporary coldness. He greeted Jeanne Bethune with one of his most brilliant smiles, and told her he proposed to stay and sample her dinner.
“There is no one in this whole wide world who can cook like you, Jeanne, When I am away from you I pine for the dishes you create, and the miracles you bring to table, and your master wouldn’t have me turned away. And Mademoiselle Arden is lonely, and needs someone to talk to her.” He flashed his smile at Jane. “Isn’t that so, mademoiselle?”
“As far as I am concerned,” Jeanne returned dourly, “you know that you are perfectly welcome to remain, and there is no question of your not being welcome.”
But she said it with such an intensely disapproving expression on her face, and through such extra tight lips, that Jane felt guilty. She realized, too, that much of the general disapproval in the housekeeper’s expression was for herself, and that made her feel more uneasy still.
“All the same, I don’t think she really wants you to stay,” she said to Etienne, as soon as they were alone. But he laughed and went to the cocktail-cabinet and mixed her a drink with an ease and familiarity with the contents of the cabinet that proved he had often been there before.
He put her drink into her hand. “I have given you just a little gin, and quite a lot of vermouth, because I remember you told me yesterday that you are not a hardened drinker.” He smiled at her, in the way that seemed to be undermining something vital in connection with her personal defences. “Here’s to us! Here’s to the chipped paintwork of my car, and that ugly dent that will never come out, and your father’s approval of France! But for that approval you might never have come back here, you know ... You might never have wanted to come back!”
Jane felt a little less lost in the dining-room than she had done at lunch-time, and the meal was certainly a proof in itself of Jeanne’s culinary genius. Clarisse waited on them, and blushed and giggled every time the visitor said something pointedly to her, and in particular when he asked questions about Jacques, the wheelwright’s assistant whom she was expected one day to marry.
“But Clarri is not in any hurry to marry, are you, Clarri?” Etienne said, winking at Jane. “She is perfectly happy as she is, and in no hurry to surrender her freedom which proves she is a very sensible girl.”
“Oh, monsieur, you will make the little joke!” Clarisse protested, blushing more vividly than ever as she brought the coffee and the liqueurs from the sideboard.
“It is not a joke, my child,” Etienne rejected the brilliantly green chartreuse in favour of cognac, but all Jane would accept was a creme-de-menthe. “Unborn tomorrow, and dead yesterday, why fret about them if today be sweet!” He smiled at Jane. “I believe in making the most of the moment that has arrived, the present! Why tempt Providence by letting it escape? There may never again be such a moment, and to dwell upon the past is futile. The past is dead!” But his voice sounded a little empty as he spoke.
Clarisse left the room, and they were alone. There was an enormous bowl of dark-red roses in the centre of the unstained oak table, and the scent from them filled the room. The table was laid with lace table-mats, glowing Venetian glass, and an unnecessary amount of silver considering there were just two of them. It was almost as if Jeanne had been determined the visitor should find no flaw in the service, or the manner in which she ran things even in her master’s absence.
Etienne rested his sleek dark head against the straight, high, scarlet-leather back of his chair, and looked round the room as if it pleased him.
“I do not agree with you, Jane,” he said. “This house is all that it should be, and at the moment it is very peaceful. But then there are only the two of us, aren’t there?” He rested his elbows on the table and looked at her with mystic dark eyes that seemed also to possess a certain mesmeric quality.
“I think you were wrong about Rene, too. I think that he does like to escape sometimes ... I think that we all do! Here are you and I, who knew nothing at all of one another until yesterday at noon, marooned here in the heart of what might well be primordial forest - in fact, sometimes I pretend to myself that it is primordial forest! - with no one but Jeanne and Clarri in the kitchen, and a moonless night outside.” She looked instinctively over her shoulder, and saw that it was true that the moon had not yet risen. The diamond-shaped lights set in the great mullioned window reflected nothing but darkness, and when the moon did rise, being a new moon, it would have barely enough light to penetrate the groves outside. “We could be enchanted - bewitched! Nothing of this need be really happening! Perhaps it isn’t happening”!
She smiled uncertainly. “We know it’s happening.”
“That’s because you’re a persistent realist,” he flicked ash from his cigarette, but his eyes caressed her. “Just try and pretend to yourself that Time has stood still, and has granted us a period during which almost anything might happen. It might last one, two, three days - even a little longer! But it doesn’t really matter how long it lasts ... It’s the quality of what happens while it lasts!”
“And in any case it’s only temporary?”
“Oh, Jane,” he chided, “are you so disinclined to have anything to do with that which is purely ephemeral? Must things last with you throughout all eternity, and beyond? Must they grow stale and recoil on you, just because you want to hang on to them? And, in any case, nothing can last,” he emphasized.
She felt a little cold inside, and strangely disturbed.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“I do know. I have every reason to know. And,” he added, “that is the way I think it should be!”
He rose suddenly and led the way through the salon, insisting that they should go outside to watch the moon rise. It was such a warm night that Jane didn’t bother about a wrap, and she followed him through the french windows of the salon and out on to the tortuous paths that wound between the neat clipped hedges of box and ilex. They reached the spot where they had met that afternoon, and already the graceful bronze faun was being silvered by moonlight. It crept above the tops of the trees and trickled down over their edges like a silvery cascade, and within minutes there was a faint checkerboard of silver lying on the ground at their feet.
The leaves swayed in a breeze so slight that it was hardly a breeze at all; there was a heavy scent of white roses, of grain that was already ripened, of vines straggling over the hillsides. And when the moon at last appeared, it might have been a brooch someone was holding aloft, a pale badge of silver floating in a sky of sable.
“Wish,” Etienne whispered in her ear, “and turn the money in your pockets!”
“I haven’t any pockets.”
He laughed softly. “Then I will turn mine over twice and you shall share the benefits!�
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Suddenly he felt her shivering beside him. He put his arms about her and drew her close, and then closer still.
“You mustn’t be cold, my little one,” he said. “You must be kept warm, and safe, and snug.” She felt his lips moving in her hair, and her shivering became an uncontrollable tremble deep down inside her. She tried to prevent herself from clutching at him, but her fingers were traitors and did so instinctively. He put his own fingers beneath her chin and lifted it.
The moonbeams were striking right down into her eyes, huge, limpid brown eyes like moorland tarns. The whole of the heavens were reflected in them, the stars that were so many millions of miles away, the feathery whispers of cloudtrack.
“There are stars in your eyes,” he murmured, “and I must kiss them good night!”
He did so, and then he kissed the velvet softness of her cheeks, the hollow at the base of her throat, her ears to which the tight little tendrils of chestnut hair clung even the nape of her neck. And then last of all his mouth came down and rested on her mouth, and stayed there a long, long while.
When at last she was free she hadn’t a word to say. She wasn’t even capable of thinking clearly.
“I must go,” he said. “Jeanne will be affronted if I don’t. But we will meet tomorrow, little one.” He caught her back into his arms for a moment, and kissed her with something much more like violence. “Run away quickly, petite, and tell Jeanne she can lock up the house!”
Enchanted Autumn Page 4